Valentine’s Day Collection
In honor of Valentine’s Day, Revellations created the following collection of stories, letters, poems, and more to celebrate a day of love!
Two Letters: One to be made, and one found again.
Alexandra Gilden
Dear Daughter,
Hello from your undecided half. I’m so excited to meet you and to be a good friend of yours. I’m excited to love you with everything that I am, and show you the beauty of the world that I know, and I can’t wait to see the world from your eyes. Though I brought your body into this world, you are your own soul; your own mind. Any path you want is yours. I’ll give you advice and insight, but will go no further in controlling or deciding any path of yours for you. I hope to be your best friend, the one you go on shopping dates and trips and drives with. You are already the most beautiful thing to me, and I already feel the pull of you.
Maybe I have such a strong desire for a connection with you because of the lack of connection and time I got with MY mom. Maybe somehow I’ll see things in you that were her, things that she did or features that she had that would be yours, and I could be with mom again.
Sincerely,
Half of you
— — — — — — — — —
Dear Piano,
It’s so nice to be with you again. You were a part of my life for the longest time. I know there were times I was scared of you, but you are one of the most beautiful things that I had in my life; it’s so good to talk to you again. It’s so nice to feel my hands on the keys and understand; to be able to speak the language and not be hindered by the lack of muscle while playing. I can talk, walk, run with you again and I’m home. If I speak to you, you speak back. The more I speak with you, the more beautiful things you say. The more beautiful things you say takes me back to a time when we were talking and singing and playing and always good friends. You were the first I came to with a strong emotion, the first one I spoke to about it. You listened, then gave me answers and advice and connection.
I missed you. I missed this part of me, I missed this language, these sounds, our time together.
Sincerely,
A newly restarted Musical and Phalangeal Conversationalist
Dear Chester
Erin Baseman
Dear Chester,
When you first skated into my life I knew that you and your orange fur were meant to be. From your zesty cheese to your satisfying crunch, there was no way I could ever go back to living life the way I had before. You’ve shown me how to live life in a way I’ve never considered. Like wearing gloves while eating messy snacks? The mark of a genius.
You’ve never lied to me. You’ve never made me believe you were anything other than what you are. You’re guaranteed fresh baby. I remember this one time I was at a birthday party, and I had lunch, but something was missing. Then I saw you. You were what I needed–a little sweet, a little salty, and a whole lot of crunchy. Then there was this other time a friend was begging me to do her homework for her, but you kept me honest. My friend was a vegan and our teacher would have known it wasn’t her doing her homework. I’ve become a better person because of you and I can’t be more grateful for that.
There’s something about you that’s just timeless. You’re my past, present, and future Chester. I think back years and years ago, and you were always reliable. You were always there when I expected you to be. Now, you’re always there when I need you. When nothing else will do. I hope in the future you’ll be there in the way I’ve grown to love. You are joy, excitement, wonder, color, and the coolest cheetah I’ve ever known. I’ll always think of you as one of my first loves, and I count myself so lucky for that. I love you, Chester.
With Love Always,
Your Valentine
A Valentine’s Adventure
Juan Paraiso
Satoru approached Mei with his characteristic unbridled confidence, even as she exited her house with a look of confusion and her hands making the gesture that expressed the same emotion. He simply smiled at her.
“Wanna cook?”
Mei’s eyes shot up in surprise, and even some excitement. Satoru knew that she would say “yes,” anything to dabble in the hobby she loved dearly.
***
Satoru wheeled in the necessary ingredients for this cook. Mei had already begun grinding the cookies: chocolate chip, the proper sprinkling for flavor enhancement. She moved out of the way for Satoru to add the cream cheese, while she emulsified the mixture with the proper apparatus. Before then, Satoru had also urged Mei to put on the necessary safety equipment, such as gloves and face masks (because Satoru was not feeling well that day).
Throughout the process of melting chocolate, precipitating the flour and sugar into dough, and forming it into the desired sphere shapes before dipping them in the hot chocolate, both partners were engrossed in the whole process, like two scientists. When they had put their first batch in the fridge, the two eagerly looked on as the reagents underwent their reaction into delicious cookie truffles under the proper temperature of 277.6 K. After the second and third batches, Mei got impatient and Satoru laughed when he saw her taking a bite of raw dough and regretting her decision soon after.
Before long, the two had created just enough cookie truffles. When Satoru had bitten their test truffle, his eyes lit up. “We’re such goddamn geniuses.” He reached his hand out for a hi five to celebrate their achievement. Mei, ever so the elegant individual, put that aside and gave him a hard hi five in response.
Now came the fun part; distribution of their product for Valentine’s Day. The two went door to door passing their truffles in bags to their closest friends. One of their friends tried shaking them down for more chocolates, but conceded when Satoru and Mei negotiated that he would have some of the leftover truffles the next day. Satoru and Mei only received payment in the smiles and compliments that they received from each recipient. With that, the two fist bumped, content with doing something nice for their friends on Valentine’s Day.
“Yaknow, I’m down to make this a tradition,” Satoru admitted.
Mei simply smiled as she bit into a truffle. “That can be arranged.”
The Lady
Annika Ancheta
Once on the fourteenth of every year, the Lady adds a new one to her collection.
She begins with the body. Soft interwoven threads, wrought from shopkeepers and sheep laying past the pastures from her porch. Dyed wools that she carefully snipped to curling lines, wrapping them around her pinkie to measure. They slither away from her nail, from those rose-encrusted tips sharpened to a curling hook, lacing themselves around her knuckles to keep a solace of some magnitude. She’s delicate, she’s refined. She starts with the feet, winds up to the legs, taking her time in getting every notch just right. Until you could see the bulk of the knee jutting from the leg, or the shape of the hips that curve up to the waist. She furthers down the torso and ravages it so, in that utter grace that one could almost call destructive. It’s like she ruins the yarn, turns it into her own plaything, a natural element of hers to control. She continues up and up, past shoulders ending with tiny hands — miniscule, dainty, each finger tightened at the tips. And finally the head, a simple ovular shape, with a loose thread that she snips off with a flick of her nail.
The Lady uses all kinds of tools. She’s not picky — not with material nor the needles she pricks. She begins to lace branches in the long locks of hair, a fiery red at this point of the year. She places small dandelions, cauliflowers, tiny specks of dirt where one least expects. She dips her hand in some water from the streams of the river right by her den, where she once skipped around and now hovers around like a ghost, dousing each edge of the puppet’s body until it’s filthy with wet. She carves the bosom from pebbles, the skirt from grasses. She bites off a portion of its shoulder to give it more of an edge. She spits into its face and cleans it off neatly, before plunging her talons into the sockets to give a good space for buttons to grow.
She nestles the seeds into the dips. It takes only a few moments. Dark, round circular studs popped out like sprouting orchids from within the tanned material. The Lady begins to cry, her tears of an ugly emerald seeping through the doll’s skin, creating pores unmatched by any other creation of perfect tending. She cries and cries until she cannot anymore, until bile rises from her throat and gives her but a moment to angle her head so that her vomit does not touch the doll’s parts above the waist. She cries until her teeth — five this time, no more, no less — fall past her lips and embed themselves in the doll’s shins.
It’s almost there, she realizes. She needs one more. One more thing to be mine.
She walks over the table. Each step against the floor is one of broken glass, scraping against the shattered chinaware until each step is bloodied and each breath is ragged. Her legs seem to bend inward, pulled against each other in a form of gravity. Her head grazes the ceiling, long locks of slithering serpents and undefined threads looping past her back and across the floor. Animals nestle within, fighting tooth and nail; others are dragged deeper into the burrows of her mane, cries stifled in a switch. She pulls her body across her home, her cottage that she loves and hates oh so much, until she comes to a table at the far end of the room.
On it lies a man. Light white skin, ivory in the candlelight. His skin is sallow and weak, his eyes stare towards his skull as if it were a star. He’s almost fully up. She’d have to fetch another soon.
The Lady kneels in front of the man’s head. Beneath his head at the foot of the table is a bowl, in order to grab the contents that strayed. The Lady hated messes. Or at least the ones she did not control.
She tips his head further back until it rests completely against the table’s edge. Then she flexes her fingers, reaches inside his mouth. He’s still pretty warm, though the cold’s begun to catch up, and soon decay thereafter. She needs to work quickly. Today’s the day after all.
“I haven’t tried the left kidney,” she mutters. Her words are akin to the shivering Earth, grasses whispering falsehoods and sharp rocks clattering against a skull. “Maybe the left kidney this time.”
She digs around further, deeper and deeper, until her fingers wrapped around a large oblong object, squishy and soft. She pulls out the man’s left kidney, pooling against her hand, nearly melting into her embrace. She presses it close against her chest, exhaling a soft breeze that stirs the silverware in her cottage. The kidney hugs her back. It drips down her dress of skins, trailing down her gown but never to the floor. Controlled messes. She’ll squeeze it into the bowl later.
She comes back to the doll. She presses her fingernail against its cheek and swipes, creating a small mouth for her to eat. Then, articulately, each movement more calculated than the last, then presses the kidney into the doll’s mouth. She assists it down with her talon until she finds it perfect situated within the torso. Then she begins to shape it: bulging it in places and smoothening it in others. Soon enough her nails create the grooves of intestines, small little dents that could be mistaken for veins. She carefully clumps a small portion of the organ into a spot beneath the chest, forming a perfect, delicate heart.
“You are finished,” the Lady crones, gasping for breath as she beholds her perfect amalgamation. Her abhorrent masterpiece.
She presses her lips to the doll’s, leaving behind a stain inhumane.
“Come to me,” the Lady whispers to her. “Come to me, and my cottage abode.”
❦
Marguerite raps on the door once. Twice. She hears clattering on the other side of the door. She doesn’t know why she’s here, why she was suddenly drawn to the woods. Why there was a cottage within the woods that she’s never seen before, a bit ways off from the town and by an opalescent stream winding past the brush and foliage. Why it was so beautiful, so perfect. Asters and irises peppering its roof and chimney, saplings and sunflowers like pillars against the door. Windows with pots of lilies and jasmines. Vines of grapes and olive hanging above. It’s the most beautiful house she’s ever seen, wrought to fruition by Mother Nature herself.
It was the 14th. She had a date later. Why was she here again?
Then the door opens, and out steps a Lady. The most gorgeous woman she’s ever seen in her life. Her skin like golden stems of sunlight peppered with small nicks, hair as dark as the eye of a sunflower that flowed past her shoulder in cascading falls. Her eyes, periwinkle and brown, a fertile mix of the soil, bat their long pretty lashes against the wind twirling through the woods. She wears a long flowing dress that hugs her body tight, an embrace of a pure unadulterated compassion incapable of humans. In her hands — long and pianist-like, tiny nails tipped to a point — clutch a tiny doll that looks exactly like her.
Inside the house, above the fireplace mantle, are dolls. Dolls of women, all shapes and sizes, from skin of the whitest clouds to the deepest midnights, hairs shorter than crabgrass and longer than a sailor’s rope. There’s something on their lips. She can’t quite place it.
The Lady smiles, and speaks soft and melodical. A song from her rosy pink lips that Marguerite wants ingrained into her psyche.
“You came.” The Lady gestures inside. “Make yourself at home.”
Paper Carnations
Alvin Jones II
The pair never had much in life. Two inmates in a dungeon who only had each other. Of course, there were other prisoners, but most down here were level headed and understood that making friends was dangerous. But the pair did not mind that.
They quite welcomed the danger.
And in the steely catacomb, where they were raised, trained, and would probably die, they found friendship, a sensation that would soon develop into love.
The two were seated cozy in the man’s cell, despite the restrictions on such occurring. His cell had been lined with books of all sorts of languages, though neither could read more than English and French. But in spite of their lack of language skills, the woman found herself in the cell often enough, enjoying a book. This particular one, a volume on holidays that people up on the surface celebrated, had caught her eye.
As she combed through the pages, seated on the floor with her back against the spines of books, she found one that intrigued her and could not help but share to her host.
“So what about it?” He did not seem as impressed.
The woman, Number Seven, chuckled at the question. She had not expected him to be as invested as she was. He had certainly read this book before and had probably confined each holiday to the rubbish bin in the back of his mind. He had a way of being pragmatic to a fault like that at times. “It’s a pretty fun idea, isn’t it?”
“For people on the surface maybe.” The man who replied to her was Number Eight, her only friend and only love in this prison.
“Ah, don’t be like that,” Number Seven said. “Just cause we ain’t got no fancy roses doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate. It’s cute.”
“Cute, huh?” Number Eight repeated. “I’ve never been much of a fan of cute things.”
“Then what am I?”
“An exception,” he chuckled, conceding on the point. “But fair enough. Then what do you want to do for this… What was it called?”
“The book called it Saint Valentine’s Day,” Number Seven answered.
Number Eight sighed. It was not clear if it was in detest or if it was in resignation, but he rose from his cell bed and made several paces toward the shelf before sliding down to take a seat beside her. He groaned for a moment as he sat up against the leather spines that adorned the miniature library of his. “How on Earth do you sit like this,” he wondered, craning his head to see the page. On it was the title in bold characters, written out FEAST OF SAINT VALENTINE: VALENTINE’S DAY with a set of paragraphs and pictures to accompany them. The first was of the saint himself, though that interested neither inmate very much. A few blocks of texts lower, though, was a section on the contemporary practices — gifting chocolates and flowers.
“Well there’s no way the guards will give us any chocolate, that’s for sure,” Number Eight said softly, turning the page for Number Seven. She had not yet finished the page, but did not protest his actions.
“But this’ll do,” he said, pointing to a page in remembrance of Saint Patrick. He carefully tore it from the book, earning himself an outburst from Number Seven.
“Hey, hey!” she grumbled, snatching the book back, glaring at him. “It may be your’s, but don’t just tear at it!”
Number Eight ignored her words as he began to roll the bottom half of the page. The top half he began to crumple for a moment until he was satisfied. He smirked at his lover and handed her back the page in its new shape.
“You ignoring me now?”
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” he said, still grinning.
“What’s this supposed to be?”
“A flower,” he chuckled. “It’s pretty terrible — I’m horrendous at origami — but I hope this will bring you your festive joy.”
Number Seven blinked at the gift, seeing that if she squinted it could perhaps be mistaken for the shape of a flower. Maybe a cockscomb or a carnation. Either way, she took his offering and found herself smiling. “Thanks.”
He leaned over and planted a kiss on her cheek before rising back up. “Okay, now I’ve just got to remember to do this every February… which day was it?”
“Fourteenth,” Number Seven answered. “Oh, but you don’t have to do that. You’ll mess up your books.”
“Those things?” Number Eight said, glancing at his collection. “Hm… I suppose. Then I’ll just use the one’s in latin. That’s pretty romantic isn’t it?”
Number Seven rolled her eyes, finding the pun unbearable. But despite that, she found herself laughing. Joy was not something she got to have very often while down here, and when it came like this she could do nothing but let herself laugh uncontrollably.
“Hey!”
Both reared their heads up, seeing that a guard was approaching the cell. The darkly dressed officer glared at Number Seven before pointing across the hall to her cell. “Subject Number Seven, return to your chamber.”
The fact that the cell doors down here locked was merely a formality. Any of the Subjects who had lived down in this filthy abode could easily bend the bars given a moment unsupervised. Most had behaved in fear of being shot. They had been trained down here as super soldiers, but they were still very human. Those that did not get that memo were shot and disposed of.
Number Seven rose to her feet, not feeling up to arguing with the sullen officer. She was in too good a mood to ruin it by even exchanging more than a sentence with him. “I’m moving, I’m moving,” she chuckled as she walked out of Number Eight’s chamber. She gave him one look before she returned to her side of the facility. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”
[…]
Number Eight awoke with the sensation that there was work to be done. The facility was quiet as ever, and the days blended into one another, the only thing keeping him aware of date being the clock and calendar he had received a few years back due to good behavior that hung above his bed.
“Fourteen,” he muttered, seeing the date.
He moved to his book shelf and picked up a volume. It was a copy of The Odyssey in the original Latin text. He ripped from it the first page in the book, page twenty three. With it, he began to slowly craft the blossom he made annually. It was meant to be a red carnation — the only flower he had ever seen in person — but he struggled still to make it.
“Good enough, I suppose,” Number Eight sighed. “She was never one to judge.”
He moved to the cell door. A decade ago or so, it would have been busted open by Number Seven fairly often. Now it remained locked everyday except for one day of the year — Valentine’s Day.
As Number Eight walked across the aisle, the aerie silence of the facility resonated around him. Everyone else was gone. Either killed by the officers, the training, or by their own hand. All safe for himself and Number Seven.
He had remained at peace in his prison. As miserable as it was, he did not know enough about the surface world to even attempt breaking out of this facility. This was life. That was how he thought.
Number Seven had disappeared a few years ago. She had told him to come with her before bursting out of this godless pit like an angry gale. He had no clue if she made it out alive, but he knew he regretted not fleeing with her. Now he only spoke to her on the Fourteenth of each month, in her empty cell as he laid a flower down on the bed. There was already a menagerie of paper pages flung on the bed, some in better conditions than others. The carnations he had stored here had mostly all come undone, with varying states of fallen apart.
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” he said with a wistful smile.
A Letter from a Lover, Abandoned and Heartbroken
Megan Lee
It was a dark day that Thursday when I sought you for comfort and sustenance, only to find your usual haunt–the space you had so certainly carved out as yours since I first saw you there–occupied by emptiness. Saddened, unspeakably, I was by this devastating discovery. Where had my love gone? Who was I to take home if not the light of my life, the sun of my days, my sweet spring flower, the dazzling diamond of my crown, my precious, my one ring to rule them all? Oh Maruchan chicken flavored instant noodles, nearest and dearest to my heart, if you knew how much you meant to me then would you have been there, sitting on your gray mesh throne like the king of the Food Pantry you know yourself to be, for me to take into my arms?
As I walked the lonely road back home, a road I had never needed to know until that despondent day, I wondered to myself since when had you and I become so inseparably intertwined? For perhaps I have grown dependent on you, more so than I dare say I should have ever allowed myself to, because with your loss I am at a loss. In the early mornings, before my Sisyphean suffering at the hands of lecturers with too much to say and none of it interesting, what would there be for me to enjoy if not your just so slightly soggy, sodium coated strands? Where else would I find joy after returning from a day’s daunting battle of actually attending all my classes if not in the warmth of your ever so fragrant, piss yellow broth? Who am I without you?
While I might have first fallen for your flavor, a divine taste unlike that had ever graced my humble tongue before (and believe me I’ve been around the block), since getting to know you I have found you to be so much more than a one way ticket to 6 feet under via high blood pressure. You are so reliable, more reliable than any other I have known. Without fail in three minutes you are ready for me to enjoy, and there has yet to be a time I haven’t.
Tomorrow I will brave the world again in hopes we can be reunited…and it is my deepest desire that my wishes do not go to waste.
The Last Valentine’s Day
Rhiannon Scray
Every year, we take all the red and pink and purple candy from the bags and we have a decorating competition. Kind of like a gingerbread house contest, but much more serious. The rules are simple: you can build any structure of your choosing, but it must be edible and it must use the aforementioned colored candies. Otherwise, there are no rules.
Last year, I made a little “love shack” or what I imagine one might look like if it were a real thing. Mostly inspired by the B-52’s song which is on the playlist we use every year during the contest. It’s their favorite song. I know that because every time it comes on, they stop what they;re doing and make me stop what I’m doing so we can dance around the room until it’s over. This was the year they made the Chicago bean. They used an edible metallic frosting over the red candies so it really just looked like giant red jelly bean. I let them win anyway. Other things they’ve made include our cat, a sofa, the leaning tower of Pisa, a breakfast plate, and, my personal favorite, our flower garden from the backyard.
Our friends have asked us how we started the tradition, and we never had a good answer. I think the best answer is that we both took bits and pieces of old traditions and mashed them together, made it our own.
Our life together was kind of like that.
At first, I didn’t know what to make this year, didn’t know if I would make anything at all. But I had nothing else to do today. Nothing else to fill these never-ending 24 hours except wallow in my own grief. So I made the only memento I still keep. Seeing them in this reddish-pink light, their favorite colors… the same shade of red they looked on that day… they look more like themselves here than in the picture I copied it from.
That was the last day I saw them. It seems fitting that this will be the last day anybody sees me.
The Valentine’s Day Massacre
Garrett Aja
Case #: 5318008 2947 February 14
Files from the Bureau of Banned Magic
Lead Investigator: Nesero Rupsi III
Item description: Compiled Information of the Massacre of Lusha in the Soldar Kingdom on the Wednesday of 2937 February 14, commonly referred to as “Valentine’s Day”
Information is as follows:
In the year 2936 of the Alsesti calendar, in a town called Lusha, a man by the name of Rojul Valentine attempted to create a potion to make his wife more youthful. A by-product of said potion was a gaseous substance, later known as the cursed drug “Cupidium-1”, that had the unfortunate effect of making the poor idiot who has ingested it to become extremely infatuated and ungodly focused on reproduction. Rojul, having breathed in a small dose of the gas, went on a spree of seduction within his hometown for a few days with a wide range of ‘success’. Tracing his genealogy back from modern times would suggest that in those few short days, he fathered roughly five children. However, some investigations have the number closer to eight on that first use. Realizing the potential of the potion, Rojul set out to recreate the substance and refine it into a more stable form. Of course, this would lead to the later versions of the potion being recreated. Said versions being “Cupidium-2” and “Alluria” both having similar effects as their parent potion. Cupidium-2 a heavily diluted version of Cupidium-1 had the effect of making the user very aroused while enticing them into a heavily suggestive state. Tests of this state by later Alchemists found that the upper limit of suggestions for those who fell under the potion was near unreachable. Examples include making an assistant believe himself to be a cat trapped in a man’s body. According to those close to him, he still has the desire to mewl even after deconditioning. Alluria on the other hand made a user become near irresistible to those nearby opposite sex via causing them to release roughly a thousand times the amount of natural pheromones. In a closed room with the opposite sex for several having taken the drug, several volunteer Alchemists collecting data had to be restrained. Within a month of completing these ‘safe’ versions of his potion, Rojul had opened a shop under the selling point that he had discovered the secret to love, and had perfected the legendary love potion. If a person had taken this drug after it was given to them, say in a drink, and the person in front of them had used Alluria then the second person would be near irresistible to the first. But Rojul’s failure to account for unforeseen variables would lead to an escalation in conflicts in the town. Customer’s not following directions and using too much, or not isolating their targeted partner would lead to many fights breaking out. Of course this was not to Rojul’s concern as all sales were final, hindsight would tell that he should have been. Within three months of opening his store, several other shops using the diluted “Cupidium-2” as the base released their own versions of the potion or similar. It was at this point that the market for this potion exploded and the true damage began. Suitors of one woman would compete to get her to ingest the drug, ending up killing each other before even getting near her. Women would target married men, or high ranking royals, in order to be impregnated. There was even talk that a few deranged individuals tried to trick a dragon into consuming the potion. Things were quickly expanding outside the city and taking root in other towns as well.
It was not until the drug found its way to the royal palace that something was done. A rather brave or stupid guard with a rather large infatuation with the queen decided to spike her tea. They were caught in the act by another guard, though his reasons for being near the royal sleeping chambers were questionable at best. He was later seen disposing of a vial of his own, by a servant on duty in the kitchen. The King had the first guard paraded naked through the capital, then nailed from the castle gate. As for the guard that reported the action, he was promoted to a battalion commander at the front line of the war. After this, the queen’s personal guards were replaced with a cohort of trained female knights. Records show that she was close friends with many of them to the point that they would take shifts in her bed chambers to protect her at all times.
At the same time, in Lusha, Rojul decided it was time to change out the vats of his potion to ensure he did not sell any subpar products. But with other stores selling similar products using his own as a starting point before adding other potions to the mix, He was selling more than ever. In an attempt to keep up with demand, he made an exorbitant amount of the undiluted Cupidium-1, and had it in sealed vats that would be changed out each month. While a good idea to a prospering merchant, Rojul failed to take into account his own idiocy. Having forgotten about the vat once demand went down, it sat and like most things left alone for a long time it fermented. After an unknown amount of time, seeing the potion had changed, he assumed it had undergone a change that would reduce the efficacy by a large margin. So he decided to mix in the outdated bottles of Cupidium-2 and Allurium which then sat for a few days once again, before he pulled the flush valve. This violent concoction later known as “Limerence” began to spread through all the sewer systems of the city. At which point it began to revert to its original form as a gaseous substance and drift up the drainage pipes and gutters of Lusha. By nightfall every able-bodied adult that was exposed to the gas had found a willing partner and intercourse began no matter the place. The issue this time was the persistence of the potion’s effect on the townsfolk. The insatiable lust they were feeling persisted and started to cause their bodies to become unable to keep up with the demand. The first deaths were apparently elderly townsfolk whose hearts could not bear the strain. Soon after, those with preexisting conditions began to drop. After three days, those that could move either killed themselves or were killed by the few townsfolk that were resistant to the drug. Said resistant people, children mostly, made a mass exodus of the now inhospitable town around the same time the King’s knights arrived to arrest Rojul. He was of course assumed dead, along with the other unfortunate souls that were unable to leave. Although later investigations, using protection and cleansing magics, would reveal that a body was never found.
Today, more than a decade later, the town is a classified quarantine area in which any trespasser is imprisoned. Most of those who try to enter the area are young love hopefuls trying to recover bottles of the potion for their use, or to make their own fortune. Pockets of the gas can still be found in buildings and in the sewers, leading to extra care being taken to block wind from entering the town, and moving these pockets. Some surveys of the nearby flora and fauna seem to show evidence that the potion also had the same effect on wildlife. A few drainages into rivers and streams caused outbursts of populations of other species. Even the creation of some new strains of plants and animals through interspecies breeding occurred. This of course led to the creations of new magic herbs and even the large antlered wolf.
